


Tragedy

by julie



Category: November Rain - Guns N' Roses (Music Video)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-01-01
Updated: 1999-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22399678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/julie
Summary: Everyone deserves their fifteen minutes of fame.
Relationships: Bride/Groom (November Rain)





	Tragedy

# Tragedy 

♦

They’d used each other before, in the nicest possible ways, but the relationship between Rafe and this woman was changing, growing apace. He tried to figure out what had made the difference, how the barriers had been broken. Because that’s what was happening – they were exploring past the habitual superficiality, touching depths of tenderness previously shored up against life’s systematic cruelty. 

The rock songs he’d sung, the words he hadn’t believed that had nevertheless made him rich beyond imagining – it seemed they were true after all. And then the love became even more than that. What he had for this woman was the best and deepest thing he’d ever felt. Rich beyond imagining all over again. 

He knew the when of it, if not the how or why – it had been as simple and as subtle as one look. The two of them were at some seedy nightclub, with the guys from the band and the current hangers-on. She had seemed distracted, distant, and Rafe wondered whether or not they would go back to the hotel for sex. Their couplings had always been dispassionate, but her withdrawal tonight was something different. 

And then, as he’d mulled this over, she turned to him and stared. Impossibly, it seemed both preordained and accidental. What if their gazes hadn’t met during that one moment? The idea made him shudder. She had stared at him direct from her heart – those perfect green eyes intense with emotion, that perfect face at last enlivened, all of her focused only on him, serious. Excitement arced between them. 

Rafe stood, took her hands in his. She was vivid music to all his senses. He didn’t know what to do; she rose and led him to the dance floor. It was a high energy song, but he drew her close into his arms and they swayed to every fourth beat. Words tumbled in his mind – poetry to express the inexpressible. New lyrics that made the old seem petty. 

She was taller than him, and wore high heels as well. He didn’t mind: he liked to press his mouth to her throat, hide his face in her hair, feel her move against him in unexpected places. She had the most perfect body he had ever seen. She’d made a lot of money from it, modelling the most extravagant clothes as if they were created just for her, bringing the weirdest outfits to life, gracing the cover of the classiest magazines, carrying everything off with a style that was all her own. And Rafe had been smitten enough with the photographs to ask her into his crazy, bitter circle of friends. 

Smitten with lust, to be honest. But it grew to something more, in the unlikely setting of that horrible nightclub. Something with potential. Something with a little soul, even though Rafe had long suspected that none of them had such a thing. 

The sex that night was more like making love. Yes, perhaps together they could create a little love for the world. That would be fine. 

Even when they were done she still stared at him, the intensity softening to something more intimate. She was smiling now, where she had earlier been serious. The smile was small, enigmatic. Rafe was entranced by the mystery of her, humbled by the beauty of her. How was all this possible? He reached deep inside himself for the necessary emotions, and fell. Fell hard. 

♦

Five hundred guests, photo opportunities for the press, people lining the streets to weep and cheer as the ribbon-bedecked cars swept past. The bride sweet and sexy all at once in a white silk gown that was anything but traditional. Rafe looking more like a pirate than a bridegroom, but for the expression on his face. He was the Prince Reclaimed, she was Beauty Triumphant, and this was the beginning of Happily Ever After. The whole world was in love with them, and in love with the songs she inspired in him. What Rafe felt could have filled the universe. 

“Do you, Rafael, take this woman…?” 

Incredible that this delightful creature, with her statuesque perfection, and her pure cool love, and her light funny ways – this lovely woman was giving herself and taking all of him. 

“I do. Yes. I do.” To have and to hold. 

♦

Till death us do part. He buried her in the wedding dress, the dried bouquet of flowers macabre in her long dead white fingers. She had chosen Arum Lilies for the bridal bouquet. Pearls for tears, and the carnal lilies. 

Three months together, three perfect months. Then a week at the ghastly hospital, Rafe not knowing what the hell was happening. No one would tell him. She must have been in so much pain, but never a word about it. She smiled bravely, let him hold her. Sweet hope, painful bewilderment, crushing despair. He hadn’t known how to cry before. 

Again, everywhere he turned, her face was on the magazines. Newspapers ran the wedding pictures in grainy black and white. Reporters hounded his grief, his fear, his ignorance. “She must have known,” one shouted at him. “Didn’t she tell you?” 

She must have known. He was too numb at first to consider all the implications. For a while Rafe pushed away the thought, remembering only her heart talking to his through all the barriers. The beautiful songs still tumbled from him, the joy of them now colored poignant. He mourned, and the world mourned with him. 

But then he began to realize, to see a little of the truth, to figure out a little of who she was. This time, he built the walls too high too wide too deep for anyone to ever breach again. And the songs were entombed there with him; blighted, withered, dead.

♦


End file.
